Oh so very annoying.....

Thursday 5^th October 2017

Long Itchington to Radford Road 

4.75 miles, 10 locks

They said it would be windy overnight and they were not wrong!  She blew and she blew, but we were safe, secure and toasty with the fire going yet again.  We had a fairly early start as I wanted to pop back to the shop first thing.  Sadly, they did not have the paper we wanted, but I got a couple of other bits and bobs, so not a complete waste of time and Monty enjoyed the walk.  When I left the boat just after 8am it was still very windy and quite chilly, by the time I got back the wind had dropped a bit and the temperature was rising nicely as the sun came out. 

We were off before 09:00 and just before B26 we passed nb Endeavour who we last saw heading south (as we were) on the Oxford Canal back in August. 

She is now heading East on the Grand Union whilst we are going west.  I don’t suppose we will ever find out where she has been in the meantime.

This is rather a nice view of the first locks of the day – a staircase pair at Glascote Bascote (thanks to Patrick for alerting me to my slip of the brain- wrong set of locks!).  As we arrived there was a boat on the lock landing – hooray we thought, they are waiting for a partner to tackle however many locks they intended doing today.  Sadly no, they were not sure when they were going.  Dad and his young son were up and about and apparently waiting for Granddad to make a decision when or if he was going to move.  He appeared and said no, they would be a while, so go ahead.  We did tried to explain about saving water and how much easier it is with two boats, but no they were adamant they were staying put on the lock landing.

This is when it all became seriously annoying.  As the bottom lock of the staircase was nearly empty and we were about to leave the they came down to say they had decided to go - arrrrrrgggghhhh!! We said we would wait at the next lock.

Just to make life even harder all the locks had their bottom gates open - due to wind and the gates swinging rather than negligent boaters.  In we went and waited - I was about to go and open the gate on the offside when the young lad came rushing down the path to say another boat had turned up and they would go with them!  Arrrrrgggghhhh!  Mind at least they had the courtesy to tell us. It was, however all rather annoying.

Once upon a time there used to be narrow locks alongside the broad ones and how I wish they were still there as it would make life so much easier for narrow boats.

The remains of the old locks is more visible from the bottom of the lock

The broad locks are all very big with hydraulically operated paddles.  Most are not too hard to turn, but they all take around 23 turns to open.

We met boats coming up at a couple of locks.  One had at least five men on board of whom at least two were sitting down to a full English!  Jealous me?  Not a bit of it!!

We gained ourselves a locking partner for the last two locks of the day - nb Hester.

It was quite a distance from the penultimate lock to the last one and the lady crew member was going to walk it, so Monty and I joined her.  She set off at a cracking pace as she said she was on a mission, but was not going to tell me as I would see in due course - and here it is!  Between Fosse bottom lock and Radford Top lock if you fancy a go!

This almost looks like a submarine!  It is moored just after Radford Bottom Lock

Is she a crew member??

 We initially moored just round the corner after the winding hole at Radford Road.  A perfectly good spot, except we seemed to keep going aground, plus the fact that we had no internet.  When we came this way in August we were further along the canal, so after a while we moved forward about 200 yards and lo and behold the water is deeper and we have internet!

and this is our view across the canal.  It will do us very nicely.  It has been a day of sun with a lot of gusts of wind - perfect for drying a washing line of towels!